sea of glass and fire
by smallninecrimes
Summary: Clarke Griffin knows what it means to give everything. Bellamy Blake does not know how to love without sacrifice.
1. there's blood between us

—

They wake Raven first.

With Monty gone, it just—it makes sense, for it to be her. With her finger hovering above the controls that will wake the mechanic from her glass coffin, Clarke decides they should wake Shaw, too. After all, he proved his worth in Eden. And pilots are hard to come by.

Plus Raven would kick their ass, and then wake Shaw anyway. It just makes sense.

Jordan hovers at Clarke's elbow, craning his neck for a glance of the girl who got his parents into space, the girl who brought herself to Earth in the scraps of a shuttle she put together with her bare hands—she's smarter than your father, Jordy, but don't tell him I said that—the girl who was shot, crippled, mind controlled, restarted her own heart and lived.

Behind him, Bellamy's smile is a living thing. His heart is heavy, still, anger and longing all at once. He wishes he gotten to say goodbye, but—well. Jordan looks so much like his parents. The smile comes just as easy as the hurt.

It takes a moment for Raven to open her eyes. Clarke notices a tremor in her leg, and wonders if being frozen in cryo woke memories in her skin. "Hey guys," she croaks. Her eyes flicker to the boy by Clarke's side. "Who's th—"

"Jordan! I'm Jordan, hi. Raven. Yeah, my name—um, Jordan."

"Sorry," says Clarke, resisting the urge to push a stray lock of hair away from the girl's face. It's not—she's not there yet. Not yet. She has to earn it. "He's kind of new to meeting people."

Raven's eyebrow shoots up to her hairline. Clarke offers a hand, and just like that Raven is swinging over the edge of her tank, legs shaking when they hit the ground. Bellamy is already moving to the next pod over, punching in the keys to wake up her—boyfriend seems such a trivial word these days—to wake up Shaw. Raven rolls her head across her shoulders, and Clarke suppresses a shudder. She forgot that Raven could do that, crack her neck like most people crack their knuckles. It sounds louder in space.

Jordan not so subtly turns away, helping Bellamy rouse the pilot, and Clarke is startled when Raven pulls her into an unexpected one-armed hug. "I'm still pissed at you," Raven mutters, her voice buried in Clarke's hair. "But I haven't properly said hello in what—six, no, sixteen years."

"Raven—" Clarke falters. She's not sure how to do this. She spent six years thinking she was done letting death speak for her. But it should be Bellamy, really, Spacekru were family out here for six years. She can't carry Monty and Harper this way.

Bellamy's hand falls on her shoulder. It's so familiar, so comforting, that she remembers to breathe. "We have a lot to talk about." His voice carries over her shoulder. Out of the corner of her eye, she can see Shaw sitting up, Jordan awkwardly trying to introduce himself once again. He doesn't mention his parents just yet. "Why don't you get yourselves oriented and meet us on the bridge."

—

Neither Bellamy nor Clarke can find the strength to say the words aloud, so they play the videos for Raven and Shaw. Shaw didn't know Monty and Harper like they did, but he knows what they meant to Raven. She folds herself into his arms, and Clarke doesn't admit to herself that it feels lonely, watching them.

—

The rest of Spacekru is next—what's left of them. Murphy still looks as beat up as the day they went to sleep, but seems the least changed of them all. Clarke actually laughs when he sees her face and says "five more minutes, mom" before almost rolling out of his pod.

There are a few others after that. Madi, of course. Indra and Gaia, who have become unusual allies and trusted confidents of their little Heda. Miller, as one of the original hundred, deserves a place to mourn the loss of their friends. Miller wakes Jackson without asking anyone, but that's okay, too. They decide not to wake Kane. His condition is too unstable. And Clarke asks them to leave Abby sleeping, too, since she'll want to start saving him straight away. It's safer, for them to sleep.

(Bellamy uses that same reason to justify leaving Octavia frozen. No one questions it, but everyone can see in his eyes that he's not ready to face her. Not yet.)

They crowd into the bridge. It's cold, in space. Clarke ignores Madi's protests and wraps her in a blanket. Half the eyes in the room are red from crying. The others look like they could sleep another century. It's funny how cryo didn't make anyone feel rested. Like freezing their bodies just kept them all in that exact state of exhaustion.

The planet with the twin suns—"Tucson," Murphy insists, "old Earth city, I read about it on the Ark once, apparently it sucked" and "I didn't know you could read," Emori retorts, a stranger couple nowhere to be found—floods the viewing window.

"Tucson," Shaw grins. As the only person to have actually lived on Earth before ALIE destroyed it, he might have actually been there. "Two suns. Funny. And appropriate. Arizona might as well have had two suns, it was hot enough."

But it's Jordan who asks the million-dollar question. That makes sense, too, Clarke thinks. "So what now?"

Across the room, pressed up to the picture of Monty frozen in his old age on that damned screen, Echo's fingers tighten around Bellamy's. Madi sees it too, and Clarke can feel the girl's gaze search for her mother's reaction.

"Now—" Bellamy clears his throat. "Monty and Harper found a home for us. I think it's time we went back to the ground." He exchanges a look with Raven and Murphy, twin smirks filling their features. "Again."

"Should we wake the others?" Gaia poses the question to the group, but no one misses the way her eyes seek out Madi.

Bellamy looks to the child, too. "Heda?"

Madi shifts in Clarke's arms, turning outwards to face the congregation of adults deferring to her guidance. Clarke still feels uncomfortable, but she knows that this is the deal she made when she let Madi lead her people into the gorge.

"We—we don't know what it's like down there," she says, less sure of herself than she has been in years. Clarke tightens her hand around Madi's shoulder in encouragement. "They're safer up here for now. We should send a—a scouting party, first."

The others are nodding in agreement. Clarke's heart feels fit to burst. Her brave, intelligent girl. She swallows around the lump in her throat, and catches Bellamy's gaze. It's so easy—to easy—to read him again, just like they used to.

Are we wrong? Is it too much to ask of her to step forward? They both know that Madi is the Commander, Heda, but whatever happens down there, on the ground—it has always been Bellamy and Clarke, and it always will be. If they stand behind the girl while she leads her people, well. They have worked from the shadows before.

"We need someone to stay behind, to watch over cryo. Just in case," says Raven.

"It needs to be someone with experience handling complex tech," Shaw chimes in.

Clarke almost opens her mouth to suggest Raven stays behind—her leg, and all. Then she realizes she'll probably get her head bitten off. Or, if Raven agrees, Shaw wouldn't leave her side, and they'll still need a pilot to get them down to the ground.

Someone else realizes all of this, too. "You guys owe me so hard for every day I have to eat that damn algae up here." Beside Emori, Murphy shakes with laughter.

Gaia opts to stay behind as well. She still needs time to recover, and the way she looks at Bellamy makes Clarke wonder what happened in that gorge before Madi saved them. Murphy doesn't volunteer to stay, which surprises Clarke, but the hungry look in Emori's eyes when he announces they'll need a cockroach on the ground goes some way to explaining his decision.

And just like that, it's decided.

Miller, Indra, and Echo are warriors. They fracture off into a group to inventory weapons, make contingency plans, and discuss scouting formation. Jackson isn't far behind, muttering about hazmat suits and medical supplies. After some argument with her mother, Madi joins them, too. She grabs Gaia's hand on the way over, and the softness in the young woman's smile is enough to lessen the sting in Clarke's heart. Jordan's with Raven and Shaw, bent over schematics and controls in the pilots chair, the boy telling them everything he learnt on this ship, growing up, and Shaw filling in any gaps from his time with the crew of Eligius IV. Their chattering is too quick and complex for anyone but Emori to understand. Murphy tries, nonetheless, one hand gentle on Emori's shoulder as he peers at the screen they're all pouring over.

And that just leaves Bellamy.

He falls into step beside Clarke, easy as breathing, and the two of them take off to the metal hallways of Eligius to talk—privately. Neither of them notices the way Echo's eyes watch them leave.

—

"Are you okay?" Bellamy's voice is deep, and darker than she remembers.

Is it because of them? Because of the family you lost? Because of the century lying frozen in a glass box floating through space? Or is your voice darker than it is in my memories because of the six years you spent on the ring, where the last vestiges of the boy that you were gave way to the burning building of the man that you've become?

"I think so."

He reaches out to push her hair—it's so short, so pretty, suits you, princess—away from her face. "We'll protect her. Every one of us."

It's especially true of the several hundred grounders still frozen in cryo. Devoted to the memory of the flame and the Commanders who bear it. What are they, now? Spacekru seems wrong, for them. Spacekru is Bellamy's family. But they're not really Wonkru, not anymore, not after Octavia broke their spirit and marched them through the desert to their death.

Earthkru, maybe. It's close enough, for what they are now, for what is yet to come.

"You promised me that before, Bellamy."

The line of his jaw stiffens. She regrets saying it immediately. He forgave her, for Polis. She can forgive him this, too. "Clarke—"

She shakes her head. "It's okay. I'm sorry, too."

They come to an uneasy stop before one of the viewing windows on the ship's stern. The vast expanse of space stretches out before them. She does not recognize a single constellation, cannot place a single star, but every one shines on them in that moment.

Clarke's eyes flicker over his profile. His hair is so curly, she forgot about that, that messy, dark bramble patch across his forehead. She never got to tell him she—she likes the beard. He's older now, more worn, more serious, carrying the weight of the sky like the titan from his Greek stories. The beard is different but—it suits him.

"I never saw you, on the Ark," he murmurs, staring hard into the black ocean before them. "This is the first time we've been together in space."

Clarke can't help but smile. "Not the way I thought it would happen."

Bellamy tips his head back, exposing the column of his throat. His eyes are closed. He opens his mouth to try and put it to words—the guilt, the longing, the anger, anything he can say to explain what it did to him, leaving her behind.

"I—"

"I was proud of you," she interrupts. It's too raw, the pain between them. An open wound. The clinical training in her seeks to stem the flow of blood, to cover and stitch and forget about it until it becomes an ugly, thick scar. "I am proud of you, Bellamy."

He nods, a little shaky, and runs his hand across his face and through that tangle of messy hair. "Whatever happens down there—Madi is—Madi's your daughter. I get that. I won't let anything happen to her."

(I won't let anything happen to Clarke. This is how we save Clarke. She'll never forgive me.)

"I trust you," says Clarke.

"This could all be for nothing, you know. This place, this planet—it's not Earth. Who knows if we can even breathe down there? Maybe the air is poisonous."

"If it's poisonous, we're all dead anyway," she murmurs, and it does make him smile—but then there are the memories of all those they lost, Monty and Harper still fresh in their minds and Jasper like a ghost in the halls of this metal cage.

"I missed you," he says. It's so quiet she wonders if she was supposed to hear it. Clarke's fingers twitch, remembering what it felt like to fold him into her arms and promise they would meet again. There is no healing this wound. They spent too long leaving it gaping open, and now it feels like—like none of this is real. Like he'll wake on the ark with the echo of her name on his lips, and she'll lie in the sand and dirt of a forgotten wasteland and give herself to carrion birds. Sometimes she wonders if she seems like a memory made flesh to him. She was an echo, really, before Madi. A lonely spirit wandering the wastes of an old battlefield.

She wants to say something, but there aren't enough words in any language to express what it felt like to hold him in her heart, to tether herself to him in the hope of surviving five years of solitude. How do you tell someone they kept you alive when they mourned your death?

"Bellamy."

The two of them startle, unconsciously stepping further away from each other when they turn to Miller, whose stern form seems to fill the vast space of the empty hallway. Things are uneven, Clarke thinks, between these olds friends. There is no deference in Miller's eyes. Clarke understands a little about the devotion Bellamy's old friend carried for Blodreina, but seeing the change between them is—disconcerting. "Miller," Bellamy acknowledges. "Is everything okay?"

Miller fixes him with a hard stare. Clarke notices the steel in Bellamy's spine. He holds himself like a warrior, she realizes, like Azgeda. It splinters something in her, to know this man hardened himself even in those gentle years.

"Guns are a limited resource," says Miller. "We've decided to use them as little as possible during the scouting mission. Indra found you a sword. We need every able fighter we have."

Clarke doesn't miss how Miller's eyes skip over her when he says this. It stings, realizing that once again her people—not your people, Clarke, not anymore—see her as privileged. Her time in Shallow Valley, plenty of food and water and trees and sky and freedom, and now she's the princess once again. She'll never know what it meant to survive in that bunker, and she thinks that Miller might hate her for that. She's sure Octavia felt the same, when she was awake.

But Clarke is not weak. Clarke is a warrior, too. She always has been. She steps into Bellamy's side and crosses her arms across her chest. Both men read the intention in her action. She thinks Bellamy might be fighting a smile, but she doesn't let her gaze wander. It feels too vulnerable, under Milller's heavy stare.

"Okay." Bellamy's voice is a low rumble. "Lead the way."

—

Madi's nervous.

Clarke remembers how she felt, strapped into that dropship with ninety-nine of her peers. Panicked. Claustrophobic. Awaiting certain death—whether from re-enty or from an irradiated planet. But Madi is twelve years old, much younger than Clarke when she was sent to the ground. She puts on her brave face, insisting she can buckle herself into her seat, but Clarke still fusses around her making sure the buckles are tight and she won't come loose in the trip down.

"Clarke," Raven shouts from across the room. She's strapped in beside Shaw, looking a little out of place in the co-pilot's chair. "I think she's good. Get your ass in a seat, already, it's time to leave."

Using the ship's extremely advanced technology, the pair had been able to analyze the planet a little – enough to find a place to land, a small clearing a stone's throw from what looked to be a cliff face.

Shaw punches at the controls as Clarke hastily fits herself into her seat.

"Murphy, put on your damn harness," Bellamy roars over the igniting engine.

"I'm trying!" Murphy snaps. Bellamy unbuckles himself from his seat and drifts across the room. The memory of a boy—a spacewalker—floods Clarke's vision, and she can almost feel the hot, sticky blood on her hands. It takes some wrestling, but Bellamy and Murphy manage to the harness straps secured around him just as the ship detaches from Eligius, and Bellamy struggles to pull himself back to his seat.

The cabin starts to shake just as Bellamy finishes rebuckling himself, and Madi's hand shoots out to grab onto Clarke's forearm. She takes a moment to drink in the faces of her friends, her family, and then turns for one last look at the Eligius ship out the rear window.

Emori and Gaia stand before the viewing platform, and she can just make out the movement of their hands before realizing they must be waving goodbye. Madi's grip tightens, and then the outside of the ship is surrounded by fire as the hit the atmosphere.

I hope we do better here, too, Monty.

The lights of the dropship flicker, and die.

—


	2. wrenched limb from limb

—

Clarke hates this feeling—freefall. Like her stomach forgets where it lives inside her body and tries to claw its way out her throat. Everything is dark around them, the ominous red glow from the fire—is it fire, really, or just the atmosphere around them desperately trying to catch them as they fall—the only illumination in the cabin.

We're going too fast.

Is this how it ends? A war, human blood farming, and a nuclear apocalypse she survives, but one faulty dropship and she's burned alive in the atmosphere of an alien planet. It feels surreal—like it's ending where it all began. She's a different person now, but she still hasn't managed to teach her heart not to thunder when she's falling through the sky.

Clarke loops her fingers through Madi's, squeezing hard. The small, reassuring wiggle does little to soothe her racing heart. Across the cabin, she can see Bellamy frantically struggling with Jordan's harness, come loose in the commotion. The buckles are broken and unresponsive. Fear fractures through her—no, no, it's too soon, too soon to fail in the one thing that Harper ever asked us for—and Bellamy gives up on the buckles, pulling the straps together to tie them into a knotted, makeshift harness. Behind them, Raven and Shaw are shouting at each other, desperately trying to get systems online as the hurtle towards the ground.

The strap over Jordan's left shoulder snaps.

Clarke drops Madi's hand and unbuckles herself before her brain can even begin to catch up to the insanity of what she's doing.

"Clarke!" Madi screams.

But Clarke is not the only one reckless in this moment—Bellamy is already out of his seat, pulling Jordan out of the broken harness and shoving him toward his own, recently vacated seat. Clarke manages to pull herself to his side with the various handles littered throughout the cabin. Together, they wrangle him into Bellamy's seat, Jordan every bit his father as he fights against them, unwilling to sacrifice someone else's safety for his own.

Bellamy and Clarke work efficiently together, securing him just as Raven and Shaw get the lights back on. "Get back in your seats!" Her voice is sharp and cold, but the fear there is palpable. "You have thirty seconds before I turn these thrusters on, Bellamy."

Clarke glances across the cabin, the bank of empty seats next to Madi, the space that took her much longer than thirty seconds to cross as the tin can they're caged in falls through the sky. She's already running through her—limited—options when Bellamy tackles her into Jordan's seat, broken straps and all.

"Bellamy!" He ignores her, but Clarke doesn't make it easy for him, pushing his hands away and screaming as he ties the straps into tight, stubborn knots.

"Ten seconds!" Raven's voice is clear—everyone else has fallen silent with dread.

Bellamy.

His dark eyes fix on Clarke's. This is worse, so much worse than the freefall. She can't breathe. Bellamy curls his fingers under the strap over her right shoulder, bracing his knees against the metal floor. Raw, battle-hardened instinct has Clarke curling her leg around his thigh, pressing her hands firmly against his shoulders.

"Three—"

Clarke glances at Madi. The girl's eyes are brimming with unshed tears.

"Two—"

Bellamy closes his eyes, and she wants to scream.

"One—"

I missed you, too, she thinks, her heart fit to flee. When I knelt in the sand with the chamber pressed to my temple, I missed you. When I found a feral child and loved her more fiercely than I thought possible, I thought of the girl with the raven hair who lived beneath your floorboards, and I missed you. When the fifth year came, and you didn't, the loneliness burned like a galaxy in my throat—a thousand stars exploding in my lungs—and I missed you so much I thought I'd lay the Earth to ashes with my screams. I missed you. I missed you. I still do.

"Now!"

Raven hits the thrusters, and Shaw wrenches the controls. The world tilts, her body strains against the makeshift harness.

Bellamy is ripped from her hands and thrown across the room with such force that the sound of him slamming into the line of seats—and Madi—is heard over the thundering of the thrusters. His head connects with the wall, and she—she doesn't hear a crack, please, God, no—

"I've got it!" Shaw roars over the thunder. On cue, they slump forward in their seats as they come to an abrupt stop, suspended in the skyline above a dark forest. Bellamy's limp form crashes to the floor.

"Bellamy?" Echo's voice is quiet, painful. Bellamy doesn't stir.

"Raven?" Clarke asks, her voice strangled. "Is it safe?"

"I don't know," she throws back. "Turbulence is minimal, but we have no idea what caused the outage."

Clarke tears at the straps around her chest, her fingernails bending against Bellamy's deft knots. "Everyone, stay where you are," she orders, but her command is clearly aimed toward the Azgedan assassin, who looks like she's two seconds away from unbuckling herself, too.

Echo nods, her mouth a thin, tight line.

Clarke darts across the cabin, her stomach still swimming from the rapid changes in gravity and velocity. Madi has a rapidly forming bruise on her cheek, but her eyes are alert, and she's staring at Bellamy. Clarke falls to her knees beside him, swaying as the ship is buffeted by an air current, and she pushes at his shoulder to roll him onto his back, swallowing the curse building in her throat.

"Is he okay?" Madi's voice trembles.

The cabin shakes.

Bellamy's eyes are closed, and when Clarke pushes his dark, tangled hair away from his forehead, her fingers come back stained with blood. It doesn't mean anything—it doesn't—even superficial head wounds bleed profusely. But she meets Madi's eyes and she can't—she can't make that promise. She can't say he's okay. She doesn't know.

"Raven?"

"A little busy at the moment, Clarke," the brunette shouts back.

"Bellamy's hurt," she says. "How much time until we land?"

Raven taps at the controls, twisting her head around to glance at the two of them, sprawled across the floor. "Less than a minute," she replies, her voice gruff.

"I'll try to make it as gentle as possible," says Shaw.

He's true to his words, and the view of the alien forest is from the dropship window is so, so beautiful. They glide over razor sharp treetops swimming in a field of swirling fog, the forest opening out into a outcropping of red and grey bedrock before plummeting thousands of feet to an endless, sparkling ocean. The water is bluer than anything that could have existed on Earth. But the awe tastes bitter and dark on Clarke's tongue. She has her fingers pressed firmly against Bellamy's throat, and the slow, faint heartbeat there is holding her like a tether.

Madi grabs her hand when the dropship settles. There is no time to laugh, to breathe, to sigh in relief that their lives are intact, and they've made it to the ground.

"Jackson!" Madi is already unbuckling herself in front of Clarke as she calls for aid. "I need your help—get the medkit."

"What can I do?" The girl asks.

Clarke ushers her behind Bellamy. "Keep his head and shoulders elevated." The little natblida hurries to do Clarke's bidding, pulling Bellamy's shoulders up onto her knees. Clarke hears footsteps and can feel the others gathered around them, peering over her shoulder. "Jackson!" Clarke calls again. She swings around to see him push his way between Indra and Jordan, the medkit in his hands. She grabs it, tearing the foil packaging open with her teeth. Raven and Shaw are the only ones not crowding her—she can hear them arguing with one another over the panicked chatter, trying to figure out what caused the loss of the dropship's power.

Jackson turns to their audience and urges them to back up. Miller, following his boyfriend's lead, pulls them away to check that their supplies are still intact. Echo doesn't leave with them, but she stands a few paces back, wary and on edge, her fists clenched as if she were prepared to fight her way out of this.

Murphy's voice booms across the cabin. "Echo, you can't help him, come on." The warrior is nothing if not absurdly practical; Clarke hears her footsteps follow Murphy's and the quiet hiss of the door between the flight deck and the rest of the dropship closing. She wonders how Echo feels, now, if it's anything like the way Clarke's heart has grown wings and claws and is tearing its way through her chest. She wonders if Echo's throat is also swollen thick with tears, her fingers cold and clammy with fear. Do you love him as much as he deserves?

"How bad is it?" Jackson asks.

Icy calm settles over Clarke. She knows this. She's done this a thousand times.

"Head trauma. No bleeding or cerebral fluid from the nose or ears. I don't—I don't think—" Clarke presses gently into Bellamy's hair, seeking the source of the bleeding. She keeps her voice low, trying to avoid being overhead by the bickering pilots still running through their systems check. "I don't think there's a fracture."

"How long has he been unconscious?"

"Two minutes. Less, maybe—I don't—" Clarke steadies herself with an even breath. She takes a wad of gauze and presses it against his hair. "Madi, hold this against his head really hard, okay?"

"Okay," the girl whispers, replacing Clarke's hand with her own. She jostles Bellamy a little as she moves, and Clarke waits with baited breath for his eyes to flicker open, for him to groan, to tremble, anything—

"Does he have any other injuries?"

Clarke is already pushing Bellamy's shirt up, pressing her bloodied fingers into his bruised chest. She shakes her head. "There's no blood in his mouth, no swelling anywhere else. Low risk for internal bleeding, but he could have bruised or fractured some ribs—when he wakes up—"

"Clarke," Jackson interrupts, both of them searching Bellamy's skin for contusions, swelling, broken bones—anything, "blunt force trauma can cause brain damage. We need Abby—if he doesn't wake up soon, he might never—"

"He will," Clarke insists.

"Bellamy!" Madi's surprised squeal pulls their focus, and Clarke jumps when she feels a strong, warm hand wrapped around her wrist.

Bellamy coughs, startling Madi. His eyelids flutter, and Clarke can read the intent in every line of his body, leaning forward to hold him down just as he tries to push himself up. "Don't move," Clarke insists.

"Octavia," he groans. He struggles to open his eyes, his pupils narrowing and focusing on Clarke's face. "Is Octavia okay?"

Her stomach, so long residing in her throat, falls through the floor. Temporary confusion is normal, completely normal—he's okay, he's awake, he's fine—

"Octavia is in cryosleep, Bellamy. Remember?"

His brow furrows, as if the memory is a puzzle ne needs to reorder. "My shoulder," he mutters, once again struggling to sit up. He winces, favouring his side, and Clarke clocks the movement, adding it to her analytical list of symptoms—confusion, memory loss, laceration to the skull, pain in the ribs, weakness, shoulder pain.

"Your shoulder? Which one?" She asks.

"Left," he says, his fingers tightening around her wrist as she leans half across him to run her free hand over his injured shoulder. This is a familiar injury—something she had to treat several times on Earth, looking after a hundred clumsy teenagers.

"It's dislocated," she tells him. "And you hit your head when you flew across the room," Clarke says, her fingers flying across his chest to check for other injuries. "I need you to tell me where else it hurts."

Madi's hands are buried in Bellamy's hair, the pad of gauze crimson beneath her blunt, bloodied fingernails. Bellamy winces as he tilts his neck, her worried face hovering over him. Clarke watches as he catches the bruise on her cheek, and the frown deepens across his features. "Madi," he breathes, "are you okay?"

"I'm okay," she says, as confident and stubborn as every time Clarke found her bruised or bloody on Earth.

"And Jordan?" He asks, to Clarke this time.

"He's fine, Bellamy." She's frustrated, he realizes. He opens his mouth to ask after the rest of their friends, but she cuts him off. "Everyone is fine—I meant it, Bellamy, stop struggling."

She reaches his right side, presses her cold fingertips into his lower ribs, and Bellamy hisses.

"Bruised or fractured," Jackson mutters. "Probably not broken."

Bellamy inhales, and pain lances across his face. "Are you having difficulty breathing?" Says Clarke.

"No," he wheezes, "just hurts."

"Inhaling, exhaling, or both?"

He breathes again, to test it out—and his fingers tighten around Clarke's wrist. "Inhaling."

"Do you taste blood?"

"No."

"What was the second to last question I asked you?"

He pauses, struggling to keep his breathing even. "Does it hurt when I inhale or exhale."

"Where's Octavia?"

"She's—she's in—" He falters.

"Clarke," Jackson warns, "it could take some time for—"

Clarke ignores him, cutting across. "Where's Octavia, Bellamy?"

"She's in the—the ship. Asleep."

"Why?"

"Didn't want to wake her. The new planet—it's safer on the ship," he gasps.

The relief is so sudden, so visceral, that Clarke nearly collapses onto his chest. He's okay, he's okay, he's okay. "We need to relocate your shoulder," says Jackson. She latches on to his gentle, insistent tone to keep her mind on the task at hand.

"Sure." Bellamy throws Clarke a weak smile.

"Madi, we're going to lie him down for this, okay? Can you check his head and tell me if the bleeding has stopped?"

Madi pulls the gauze away from his hair and tests his scalp with the small, gentle probing of her fingers. "It's mostly stopped, I think," she says. "I can't really see."

"Alright, Madi, that's okay. You did a good job," Clarke insists. "I need you to be really careful lying him down, alright? Keep your hands underneath his head so it doesn't bump the floor." Her voice is markedly sterner when she addresses Bellamy. "Stay still. This is going to hurt."

He doesn't answer, closing his eyes as Madi rests his shoulders against the cabin's metal floor. His jaw twitches as he clenches his teeth, and he breathes slow and even through his nose, his fingers finally uncurling from their iron grip around Clarke's wrist. She scoots around him, pressing herself between Bellamy's side and the row of harnesses against the wall. "Ninety-degree angle from wrist to shoulder," Jackson reminds her, already holding Bellamy's other side to prevent him from thrashing. "Forty-five from the body. No—"

"—no sudden or jerky movements," Bellamy groans, and it so nearly makes her laugh. Of all the things she tried to teach him, of course this is what he remembered. She wouldn't be surprised if he'd fixed a shoulder or two himself, without telling her.

I know, she wants to say. I'm the one that taught you that, in the middle of that rainstorm, with Mbege screaming in the dropship and a dozen kids shouting at us from all the things they needed us to do, and you—standing there, whatever I needed, however you could help. So stubborn, Bellamy, like always.

Clarke rolls the sleeve of Bellamy's shirt up to his bicep. The blood on her hands—his blood—has dried, so she has no trouble gripping his wrist in her left hand, and his elbow with her right. She lifts his forearm, pointing skyward, his upper arm flat against the metal floor, and slides it towards her, away from his body, until she reaches that pivotal distance. "Ready?" She exhales.

"Do it," Bellamy huffs.

She pulls his arm towards her thighs, firm and slow. The line of Bellamy's body goes tense, but he doesn't make a sound. Madi looks at Clarke with panic in her eyes, but she can't afford to reassure her—she's listening and feeling so intently for that—

There.

The bone pops back into the socket with a small click that they all hear. Raven and Shaw have long fallen silent in the background, watching as the first unbridled smile spreads across Clarke's face.

Bellamy's eyes flicker open again, and he looks clearer, now—more alert.

"Okay, Madi, we're gonna let him sit up," says Clarke. Bellamy winces but bites back any noise of discomfort as she, Madi, and Jackson help him. "I want to check your head."

It takes half a bottle of their drinking water to clean the blood out of his hair enough for Clarke to see that the laceration is shallow, and the bleeding has almost completed subsided. The greater concern is internal damage—the ribs, certainly, but those have to be left to heal on their own, though she suspects Bellamy might make this difficult for her by refusing to rest while the rest of their friends explore the new world. No, what she's most concerned about is the way he struggled to remember small details, how his eyes needed so much time to adjust, the dizziness, the loss of consciousness that lasted more than thirty seconds. All of these things, all of them, could be warning signs of greater damage to the brain.

Jackson is already ahead of her, shining a flashlight in Bellamy's eyes. "Pupillary response is normal. How does your head feel? Just the pain from the cut, or a headache, dizziness?"

"Headache," confirms Bellamy, struggling to his feet. Jackson offers him a hand, the two men clasping at each other's forearms to get him upright. He sways slightly, and Madi tucks herself under his arm for support. It unlocks a memory in his chest, a barely-thirteen-year-old Octavia hiding behind his new Guard jacket when Aurora chastised her for leaving out one of her books.

"We need Abby," says Jackson. "If there's damage to his brain—"

"My brain is fine," Bellamy interrupts, his voice gruff.

"—I don't have sufficient training for this, and neither do you. At the very least, we need her advice," he persists.

Clarke doesn't like it, but she agrees. She turns to call out to the pilots, the pair sitting at the edges of their seats and muttering rapidly under their breath. "Raven, radio Emori and ask her to wake up my mom."

"Yeah, a little problem with that," the mechanic says, a nervous edge to her voice. "Do you want the good news first, or the bad news?"

Clarke's throat goes dry. "The good news."

"Shaw figured out why we lost power."

Dread looms in her chest, suspecting the answer to her question before she braved asking it. "What's the bad news?"

"The reason we lost power. The atmosphere is unusually thick on this planet, and though we're not sure of the gaseous composition, it seems probable that there's some element that's causing electromagnetic interference."

"What do you mean?" Says Bellamy, resting his hand on Madi's shoulder.

"We can't get a signal through. We're not even sure if we'll be able to get back through the atmosphere without the dropship failing again."

Shaw leans forward, elbows on his knees, mouth set in a grim line. "We're on our own."

—


End file.
